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President Obama, in an interview with Barbara Walters of ABC News on December 13, 2012, stated, “It would not make sense for us to see a top priority as going after recreational users in states that have determined that it’s legal.” Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper proclaimed Amendment 64 as amending the state constitution on December 10, 2012 just days after Washington State Initiative 502 formally became law, legalizing the recreational use of cannabis.

CNBC estimates that the Cannabis industry is a $40 Billion dollar a year business. Internal estimates illustrate the Cannabis industry is closer to $73 Billion a year, with some industry estimates placing it over $100 Billion. There are now 18 states that have some type of legal Cannabis Program, along with several countries including Canada, the Czech Republic, and Israel.

Should you go to prison if you smoke pot in Georgia? One group plans to argue emphatically that you should not. A campaign to decriminalize marijuana in Georgia will be launched Monday at the State Capitol.

All News 106.7's Connie Cummings reports that the Georgia Campaign for Access, Reform and Education will hold a news conference to urge state lawmakers to include reforming Georgia's marijuana laws as they reform the criminal justice system. One member of that group, James Bell, says the state effort to stop filling prisons with non-violent offenders should include marijuana laws.

Bell also says they want lawmakers to modernize the state's medical marijuana law and make use of an existing state law that taxes marijuana.

President Obama said he does not support marijuana legalization but that it's time to have a "conversation" on the matter now that Washington state and Colorado have legalized the drug at the state level.

"This is a tough problem, because Congress has not yet changed the law," Mr. Obama said in an interview with ABC's Barbara Walters. "I head up the executive branch; we're supposed to be carrying out laws. And so what we're going to need to have is a conversation about, how do you reconcile a federal law that still says marijuana is a federal offense and state laws that say that it's legal?"

Though Colorado and Washington voters in November approved ballot initiatives that legalize recreational marijuana use, as well as its regulation and taxation, the drug is still banned under the federal Controlled Substances Act. The Obama administration has yet to say how it will respond, but it has a number of choices: Its options include taking a hands-off approach and letting the states proceed, enforcing the federal law itself and raiding state-sanctioned marijuana sellers once they're established next year, or suing the states.

As Mr. Obama alluded to, some members of Congress are supporting legislation to amend the Controlled Substances Act, to exempt its enforcement against marijuana in states that have legalized the drug. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy plans on holding a hearing early next year to consider the federal government's options.

Mr. Obama told Walters that while "the federal government has a lot to do when it comes to criminal prosecutions... it does not make sense from a prioritization point of view to for us to focus on recreational drug users in a state that has already said under state law that's legal."

Federal drug law enforcement, however, hardly ever targets individual drug users. Instead, if the administration chose to enforce federal law, it would likely target commercial distributors. Alison Holcomb, the drug policy director for the ACLU of Washington state and an author of the state's marijuana ballot initiative, told CBSNews.com that marijuana use shouldn't be particularly risky for individuals in the state.

"Federal law enforcement resources tend to be focused on major organized crime," she said. "It is very, very rare that marijuana use is subjected to federal enforcement," unless users are on federal lands like national parks. "By and large, the DEA has much better things to do than go after the marijuana users."

SPOKANE, Wash. – Spokane is starting to plan for the shops that will open in about a year to sell recreational marijuana.

City Councilman Jon Snyder says the city needs to identify where shops can go, following regulations in the new Washington law that will keep them 1,000 feet away from schools, playgrounds, parks, libraries and transit centers.

Snyder tells KREM ( http://bit.ly/UFPjOO) the city has a lot of work to do to protect the community and establish rules for what could be a lucrative business.

DETROIT — Detroit voters overwhelmingly supported decriminalization of small amounts of marijuana in November, but so far it doesn't appear anything has changed from the government or legal perspectives.

Not one of the four agencies MLive Detroit spoke to about the law said they have instructed officers to discontinue arrests or citations for marijuana possession in the city, based on the guidelines of the proposal.

The proposal voters passed 65-35 over a month ago says it's now legal for anyone over 21 to possess up to one ounce of marijuana on private property in Detroit.

State police said the proposal has no bearing on their enforcement operations. Get caught with pot and you'll be cited under a misdemeanor violation of state possession laws and subject to $2,000 in fines and up to a year in jail, said State Police Lt. Mike Shaw.

"We don’t enforce local ordinances, so nothing has changed for us," Shaw said. "Mariuana is still illegal for us according to state law. Anyone who doesn't have a medical marijuana card will be arrested for state possession" violation.

Shaw said any agency is allowed to write a violation based on the state law, even with the success of the proposal.

“I’m in favor of it. I think it’s OK,” Carter told Malveaux. “I don’t think it’s going to happen in Georgia yet, but I think we can watch and see what happens in the state of Washington for instance around Seattle and let the American government and let the American people see does it cause a serious problem or not.”

Washington and Colorado voted to legalize recreational marijuana last month, becoming the first two states to do so, putting state laws at odds with federal laws. U.S. officials remain critical of the laws passing.

“All drugs were decriminalized in Portugal a few years ago and the use of drugs has gone down dramatically and nobody has been put in prison,” Carter said.

He added: “So I think a few places around the world is good to experiment with and also just a few states in America are good to take the initiative and try something out. That’s the way our country has developed over the last 200 years. It’s about a few states being kind of experiment states. So on that basis I am in favor of it.”

Carter’s remarks come following last Thursday’s premiere of “Breaking the Taboo,” filmmaker Sam Branson’s documentary that says the global drug war failed and in which the former president criticized former first lady Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No” anti-drug campaign.

Carter noted that when he was president, he wanted to decriminalize marijuana.

“When I was president, in 1979 I made my definitive speech about drugs and I called for the decriminalization of marijuana. This was in 1979 — not for the legalization but the decriminalization to keep people from being put in prison just because they were smoking a marijuana cigarette,” Carter said.